The authors included in this volume were asked to revisit the traditional narratives of Roman law during the late Republic with a view to establishing whether and to what extent a greater focus on Cicero and his works would affect these. They were instructed not to treat Cicero as ‘an outsider’, but as part of a broader ‘legal culture’ of the late Republic, while at the same time remaining aware of the biases inherent in his oeuvre.

The first section of this book focused on various interrelated narratives regarding the state of Roman law during the late Republic. Thomas shows the extent to which much of the modern narrative regarding the rise of the Roman jurists and the Roman legal profession remains subtly, yet profoundly affected by notions of specialisation and intellectual isolation created at the turn of the nineteenth century in German legal scholarship. This, in turn, affects modern understanding of the significance of Republican Roman law for the emergence of classical Roman law. By counterbalancing this narrative with the evidence provided by Cicero (while at the same time making allowances for the biases present in his works), it allows the modern reader to obtain a broader, more inclusive picture and, in turn, to reflect more closely on the importance of issues such as rhetoric and of philosophy for the development of Roman law during the late Republic. This latter point finds a natural locus in the chapter of Tellegen-Couperus and Tellegen who, using an aspect of the law of succession as their example, proceed to question the commonly held belief that Stoicism was the driving force behind much of Republican Roman law. In fact, as they show, the jurists drew on a variety of philosophical influences, often also from the New Academy, when debating matters of law. This chapter, in turn, allows the modern reader to draw greater inferences regarding the impact of philosophy upon Republican Roman law, especially in light of the claims often made regarding the philosophical inclinations of some of the great Republican jurists. This insight percolates into the final chapter in this section in which Forschner grapples with the knotty issue of Cicero's ‘theory of law’.